Last Remaining Seats film series: Gran Calavera (Mexico, 1949)

Luis Buñuel’s second and rarely screened 1949 Mexican film is a hilarious “comedy-of-errors”, a critique of the Mexican nouveau riche on the eve of the postwar petroleum boom. When a wealthy and hedonistic patriarch (Fernando Soler) learns of his family’s desire to teach him a lesson by pretending his fortune has been lost, he decides to go a step further, launching a wild roller-coaster ride of mistaken identity, sham marriages and misfired suicides. Subversive Buñuelian touches are apparent everywhere, especially in the constant fetishization of soiled feet that cuts against the requisite glamour of the Mexican studio system. This film is Buñuel at his best!